Of Futurism and Fairy Tales

Published at 13:07 on 24 September 2011

One of the books I read while traveling on my recent trip south was Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot. It sort of happened by chance: I was browsing the shelves at Left Bank Books, looking for a couple of good, inexpensive used books to read on my upcoming trip, and a copy of that title which satisfied those criteria caught my mind. Having never read it, and it being something of a highly-regarded science fiction classic, I naturally purchased it.

What makes it not merely futurist but a completely unrealistic fairy tale is the plot element of the robots being manufactured by an ethical corporation that insists all its products obey the Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. It is of course highly unlikely that any capitalist corporation would so voluntarily adhere to such a set of safeguards, particularly any corporation that made robots for the military. (And remember, the military has been the funding vehicle behind much of the research into high technology.)

Moreover, even in Asimov’s story, things eventually take sinister turns, as the main manufacturer of robots eventually does bow to pressure to weaken the laws of robotics which some of its models are programmed to obey. Eventually, things reach the point of the robots deciding to manipulate and rule humanity because they believe it is for our own good for them to do so.

So far from being an endorsement of futurism, I, Robot looks to me to be a vindication of my basically Luddite views of advanced technology.

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